by Louise Allen
All Hebe said was, ‘Oh. Thank you for explaining, Anna,’ but her friend had given her much to think about. If Alex could separate one from the other, then he could make love to Hebe while still loving Clarissa. In fact, she realised, looking back with as much composure as she could, that was what had happened. In his delirium he had spoken of Clarissa, but had felt a strong enough physical attraction for her for it to overcome his fever and weakness when she lay in his arms.
So, she reasoned carefully as she wandered up and down the brick paths of the flourishing herb garden on the south side of the house, his restraint now stemmed only from the fact that he did not want to shock her or frighten her after what had happened in France, and because he did not love her he had no driving reason to attempt to seduce her out of what he interpreted as her revulsion. So, she continued, if I try, I can probably lure him into my bed. But at that point she stopped. No, she could not do it. What she had told him was true, it had to be a love match for her, anything else was not right.
She had reached this conclusion when Anna appeared around the side of the house, her broad straw hat swinging from its deep grey ribbons, her quietly elegant walking dress showing off her striking figure. Far better than Hebe, Anna could wear black to advantage for it suited her dark, dramatic looks to perfection.
‘Are you ready for our drive?’ she asked. ‘The gig is at the front. I have spoken to Mr Glossop and he has told me how to find those last three farms we have not visited.’ She conned the list in her hand. ‘Bourne Farm, that is Mr Peterson, then there is Cold Furlong: Mr Grayson, and finally, he suggested we call at Flint Acre on our way back. A Mr Thorne.’
They duly made their calls. Mr Peterson was elderly and supported by three stalwart sons, each with a wife and brood of children, spilling out of the cottages that hugged the farmhouse close. Mr Grayson was jovial with an equally cheerful wife and they were invited in for plum cake and a glass of his cowslip wine and a comprehensive account of all the doings at Cold Furlong.
Taking the reins afterwards, Hebe confided, ‘I think I am a trifle tipsy, goodness knows what he puts in that wine.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ Anna agreed, tying on her hat more firmly. ‘Now, let me think, first left here and another mile, Mr Glossop said. This Mr Thorne is a widower with no children.’
The farm came in sight, a rambling brick and flint dwelling that appeared to have grown over the years, like a humble version of the Hall. The farmyard was well kept and busy and the men stopped their work to touch their hats and take the pony’s reins. The master was in, they confirmed, if the ladies would just like to step round there into the garden.
He was indeed tending a magnificent cottage garden in the best traditional style. As he saw them approach he straightened up, brushing the soil off his hands: a tall, well-built man of about forty with an open expression and a shock of blond hair. Around him the beds were a riot of flowers, close packed and all blooming in abundance. In between were rows of vegetables, in some cases they were even mixed, and Hebe saw beans growing through roses and onions rearing up through the geraniums.
‘Oh how lovely!’ she exclaimed, breathing in the scent in delight. ‘Oh Anna, look, there are beehives as well.’
But her companion was silent. Hebe glanced at her and realised that not only was the farmer staring at Anna with the air of a man who had been struck dumb, but the Spanish woman was meeting his gaze with equal intensity. How long they might have stood there if she had not spoken, Hebe had no idea, but she coughed and Mr Thorne started out of his trance and came towards them.
‘Good afternoon, ladies. May I be of service?’ His voice had the slight West Hertfordshire burr, and close to Hebe saw he had blue eyes and laughter lines around his eyes. She liked him on sight.
‘I am Lady Tasborough,’ she said, holding out her hand and laughingly ignoring his protest that he had been gardening and was all earthy. ‘And this is my companion, Mrs Wilkins.’ To her amusement Anna was now formidably in control of herself and inclined her head with fine Spanish dignity. ‘We are visiting all the farms on the estate to meet everyone: I do hope this is not an inconvenient moment?’
‘Oh, no, my lady,’ he assured her. ‘Might I offer you some refreshment?’
Hebe refused, explaining that they had just sampled Mr Grayson’s cowslip wine and were feeling somewhat over-refreshed.
‘Ah, yes, Jimmy Grayson’s peggle wine is notorious hereabouts, my lady, you did well to refuse a second glass.’
Hebe, looking sideways at Anna, who was feigning complete indifference to the farmer, said, ‘Might we look around your lovely garden?’ and set off down a path, leaving Anna and Mr Thorne perforce to fall in together behind her.
‘This is very beautiful, Mr Thorne,’ she continued. ‘You must have green fingers.’
‘Green fingers?’ Anna asked.
‘Have you not heard the expression, ma’am? Lady Tasborough wishes to compliment me on being able to make things grow.’
‘Ah,’ Anna said. ‘I had not heard it. My late husband was a man of the towns, you understand.’
Oh, well done, Anna, Hebe smiled inwardly. How neatly you have let him know you are a widow.
The Spanish woman scanned the garden and remarked, ‘But you do not have the green finger for the ’erbs, Mr Thorne.’ Indeed, the herb patch was a sorry sight, sparse and straggly with several plants run to seed. ‘You should have planted them more in the sun.’
He listened meekly to the criticism. ‘They are poor, I do acknowledge, ma’am. My late wife always grew the pot herbs, and since she died six years ago, I haven’t really had the heart to struggle with them.’
So, now you both know the other is free, Hebe chuckled to herself. Who is going to make the next move?
‘There is a fine ’erb garden at the Hall,’ Anna mused. ‘If Lady Tasborough does not object, I could bring you some plants from there if I pass this way again. But you must plant them in the sun, and mix some little stones—’
‘Grit, ma’am.’
‘Ah? Grit, then, with the earth.’
‘Perhaps you will be good enough to direct me? I will dig over a bed, ready, and lay in some grit. Would that patch there do?’
Quite forgotten, Hebe perched on a bench and stroked the ginger cat who was sunning himself on it while Anna lectured Mr Thorne. At last they remembered her and hurried back, he looking flushed and self-conscious, she with an air of having put right a problem to her entire satisfaction.
Hebe was itching to say something as they drove back, and knew Anna was waiting for her to do so, but wickedly she launched into a lengthy monologue on the delightful Peterson family, wondering if their cottages were big enough, whether a second well should be dug and speculating about the quality of the village school, if one existed. She had a good idea that her lack of interest would perversely send Anna off with her basket of herbs far sooner than she would have done if teased and encouraged.
Back at the Hall, she left Anna eying the herb garden and hurried in. ‘Where is his lordship, Starling?’
‘The Long Gallery, my lady. I mentioned a nasty crack in the plaster, I believe his lordship has gone to look at it.’
Hebe whisked up the stairs into the Jacobean part of the house where a long gallery, built to provide indoor exercise when it was too inclement outside for the ladies to walk, remained the principle hanging space for the family portraits. She had not given them much attention before, waiting to ask Alex to show them to her, and now she ran past them without a second glance to where he was standing, head back, looking up at the ceiling.
The sound of her running feet caught his attention at once and he swung round, his face anxious. ‘Hebe?’
‘Oh, nothing is wrong. Goodness, what a nasty crack. Oh, Alex, the most famous thing!’ She perched on the edge of a heavily carved table and beamed at him.
‘Do you want me to guess?’ He came and stood before her, smiling at the pleasure on her face. It was the closest he had been t
o her for days, and Hebe tried not to let it affect her visibly.
‘You never will guess,’ she said, ‘Anna is in love!’
‘In love? That is very quick, is it not? With whom?’
‘Mr Thorne, one of your tenant farmers. We were visiting today: he seems such a nice man, and he has the most beautiful garden. He and Anna just took one look at each other, and I think if I had not coughed, they would be standing there still, eye-fast.’
‘Love at first sight?’ Alex sounded dubious. ‘Do you believe in such nonsense?’
‘It is not nonsense,’ Hebe averred stoutly. ‘I have just seen it happen before my very eyes. I think it is lovely, but I want you to ask Mr Glossop about Mr Thorne. It would be dreadful if he proved to have beaten his late wife, or has a fatal tendency to drink or some such thing.’
‘I will do as you ask, although I have a sinking feeling that if we do discover something to Thorne’s discredit, you are going to expect me to warn him off.’ There was something in Alex’s expression that chilled Hebe suddenly. He still appeared perfectly pleasant, yet when he asked, ‘So, love at first sight, a coup de foudre, is your ideal, is it?’ she felt she had erred very badly in blurting out her enthusiasm. Alex had always remarked sardonically on her desire for a love match: did he think now she was comparing her own marriage unfavourably with Anna’s new affection?
‘Good heavens, no!’ she said as lightly as she could, sliding down from the table. ‘Why, it is almost a fairy tale: one certainly could not wish for it.’
‘Not like an ordinary love match, then?’ she thought he said under his breath, but when she looked at him he showed no sign of having spoken. They began to walk back along the Gallery, stepping in and out of the checkers of sunlight cast by the lead-paned windows on the polished boards. Hebe racked her brains for some less sensitive subject of conversation.
‘Will that crack in the plaster be a problem?’ she asked at last.
‘I am not sure, I will get Glossop to have it investigated whilst I am away.’
‘You are going away?’
‘Yes, I must go up to London for a few days, I am sorry, I meant to mention it at breakfast.’
‘Oh, good,’ Hebe said, relieved that he would be able to visit his mistress, or some other lady of the night, and relieve his enforced celibacy.
‘Good?’ Understandably Alex sounded surprised.
‘Oh, I mean…that is, I am sure you will find the change is good for you,’ she babbled. ‘With no visitors at the moment, and so many memories in this house…oh, and you will be able to visit Aunt and Uncle Fulgrave, I would be glad if you could take letters…’ She ground to a halt in the face of his sceptical expression.
‘I do hope you too have not acquired a lover in the short time you have been here,’ he said lightly.
‘No! I wish you would not tease me, Alex,’ Hebe said vehemently. ‘What if someone had overheard and took you seriously?’
‘And what makes you think I am not serious?’ he asked with a lift of his dark brows that left her entirely at a loss to know whether he was teasing her or warning her. ‘You must excuse me, I have to talk to Glossop.’
Hebe was left at the end of the Long Gallery, staring after her husband with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. That conversation had gone incredibly badly, she knew. It was as though the careful pretence of a normal life that they had constructed had suddenly cracked open: not wide enough to bring the structure tumbling down, but enough to make her deeply uneasy at what might lie beneath.
Just like that crack in the ceiling, she thought, wandering back down the Gallery for want of anything else to do. Then her attention was caught by the portraits on the walls and, more for something to think about at first, then with increasing absorption, she began to study them.
They had not been hung in any sort of chronological order, so it became a game to try and sort them out. There was a small, very dark charcoal sketch that she thought might be Tudor, some very stilted Jacobean ladies and gentlemen, none of whom looked as though they resembled real life and suddenly a number of what she felt were true portraits.
Living, breathing people stared out at her from the eighteenth-century canvases. In their best clothes, adopting postures of dignity and solemnity to be sure, but real faces for all that. She began to find resemblances to Alex, mainly in the line of the jaw and the shape of the eye. Then she found a more recent picture, a charming, almost informal family group, and she realised she had found the source of Alex’s incredible looks.
The scene was a picnic under a spreading tree. A gentleman stood leaning against the trunk. His wife, her wide brocade skirts flaring about her, sat on a rug on the grass, clasping a small boy—Alex—to her. His taller brother stood beside his mother, his father’s hand on his shoulder.
The woman was undoubtedly Alex’s mother—her raven head gleamed beside the identical locks of the little boy in her arms and two pairs of deep blue eyes regarded Hebe seriously across the years. The older boy was more like his father, lighter in colouring, stockier, with the same jawline as Alex, but with less refinement in his face.
Fascinated, Hebe stood studying the portrait group for a long time before she turned and walked slowly out of the Long Gallery. The import of those generations of silent Beresfords hit her with the force of a blow. Son had succeeded father down the years and the pride of that lineage showed on every face. What Alex had sworn to by promising never to touch her was to deny himself those heirs, those succeeding, unknown generations.
Had that occurred to him yet, or was he still too distressed by the deaths of his father and brother and by the revelation of what had happened between Hebe and himself to consider it? Or had being in the Gallery just now recalled it to him and was that why he had been so abrasive?
And what, in the face of his intransigence, should she do about it?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dinner that night was a difficult meal. Anna, who still appeared to be in a daze, absently made her excuses and did not appear. Hebe felt she was in disgrace in some way, but could not account for it other than that Alex was still displeased by her unguarded enthusiasm for his trip to London.
She tried to think of ways to raise the subject, but realised that any mention of it would be protesting too much and could make him even more suspicious.
Alex was scrupulously polite, making conversation about the events of the day and ensuring she had exactly what she wanted to eat, that her glass was filled and that the salt cellar was instantly at her hand the moment she looked for it. Hebe would have been even more mortified if she realised what Starling was saying to the footman when he managed to draw him outside the dining room for a moment.
‘His lordship’s in a rare taking tonight, so just you be careful, my lad! No dropping plates, no slopping soup. Do nothing to draw his attention to you or aggravate his nerves.’
‘But he seems very pleasant tonight, Mr Starling,’ the young footman whispered back. ‘Never a cross word, so attentive to her ladyship.’
The butler rolled his eyes at such innocence. ‘Don’t you believe it, lad,’ he unbent so far as to advise. ‘Just watch his eyes.’
So the junior footman took the opportunity to do just that when he was pouring his lordship’s wine and nearly dropped the bottle when he got the full force of the cold, blue gaze. Gawd, he thought, backing away to stand by the panelled wall. I wouldn’t want to be in her ladyship’s shoes tonight.
Unaware of the silent sympathy of her staff, Hebe struggled through the meal, politely responding to each question or observation. She was so relieved when it was time for her to withdraw that she could almost have thrown herself on to Starling’s fatherly chest and sobbed when he opened the door for her with a sudden smile that instantly vanished again behind his mask of professional impassivity.
The small salon was pleasantly lit by numerous branches of candles and a fire that flickered cheerfully, although the evening was warm enough for it not to be necess
ary. Starling had realised that his mistress missed the sunnier southern climes and had ordered fires lit in the evening in the hope she would find them comforting.
Hebe shivered, out of nerves rather than any chill, and picked up her embroidery. She had set herself the task of replacing all the dining-room chair-seat covers. As she had not yet managed to ascertain exactly how many chairs there were in the set, she had a sinking feeling this was an over-ambitious project for a reluctant needle-woman. Starling, on being questioned, thought there might be twenty-four in various rooms: she could only hope he was wrong.
Part of her hoped that Alex would not come in. The braver part told her that she could not just let him go off tomorrow to Town with whatever was between them unresolved. But when he did join her, Hebe found no words at all.
‘What did you do for the rest of the afternoon?’ Alex enquired at length, having flicked through the news sheet in silence, trimmed the wick on a guttering candle and picked up a skein of silk from the floor.
Hebe jumped guiltily as though he had demanded the name of her lover and said, ‘I was looking at the portraits in the Long Gallery.’
‘Indeed? What did you make of them?’
‘Some I thought were very fine as pictures, but the ones I liked best were those where you could see the real person there.’ She hesitated. ‘I liked the one of you with your parents and brother very much.’ He said nothing. ‘Your mother was so beautiful.’
‘Yes. She died soon after that was painted. Some sudden inflammation of the lungs. I do not think my father was ever quite the same again after that.’
‘It must have been terrible for you and your brother,’ Hebe said, her voice trembling at the thought of the effect on those two little boys all those years ago.
He nodded, apparently unwilling to speak of it, and Hebe had no intention of pressing him. Then he suddenly remarked, ‘It taught me to conceal my feelings. Perhaps too well.’ It seemed to her that his face softened, the hard lines relaxing until she could see the hurt and the anger beneath the skin.
